How the FBI uncovered Russian spies posing as suburban Americans

Long before Americans were worried about election hacking and Russian fake news schemes, the New York office of the FBI was tracking a very different kind of espionage operation: Russian spies living in deep cover as normal Americans.

Between 2000 and 2010, the agents tracked a group of ten Russian agents who posed as regular people in an attempt to get close to influential Americans and send secrets back to Moscow, according to a forthcoming documentary from CBS News called The FBI Declassified: The Spies Next Door, which airs on Tuesday.

“When they first come to the United States, they’re armed only with a birth certificate,” FBI Case Agent Maria Ricci says in a promotion for the show. “They have to build a life here.”

The spies were trained in Russia, watched American TV and movies, and were given made-up backstories they referred to as their “legend,” all of which helped them blend in. According to the FBI, they lived in locations ranging from the New York and New Jersey suburbs, to Cambridge, Mass. and Washington DC.